TORONTO – Outfitting employees with wireless devices and other technology toys is great for mobility and productivity but a nightmare for security, a new poll seems to show.
Nearly half (49%) of senior leaders in mid-sized and large Canadian businesses said they’ve banned personal laptops and USB keys from entering the workplace, and 30% have outlawed MP3 players, such as iPods.
With devices holding up to 60GB of information or more, it’s too easy for employees to download company data and walk away with thousands of files in their pockets, says Ipsos Reid, which conducted the survey on behalf of Sun Microsystems of Canada.
But far too many businesses don’t take appropriate security measures, said Andy Canham, Sun Canada’s president. "In today’s global enterprise, many executives are aware of the potential risks posed by mobile devices, but they continue to lack the appropriate security measures and policies required to protect themselves from threats.”
Only 32% of the executives interviewed believed that their businesses perform at optimum levels to prevent and manage potential attack, and 17% admitted that they have a very poor understanding of the risks associated with remote or wireless access. Similarly, 13% believed that they are doing a poor job of mitigating risks and 11% are not applying proper procedures to successfully deal with security breaches.
Forty-two percent of surveyed executives said that the greatest negative impact a security breach would have on their operations is theft of customer information.
It’s no surprise that mobility is almost standard. Nine out of ten businesses (91%) surveyed provide company cell phones to some of their employees, and almost as many companies provide laptops to their employees to access their workplace externally.
